It had been 1,133 days since the last time Alexander Rossi won an IndyCar Series race. But at long last, the wait came to an end with his victory last weekend in the Brickyard Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course.
“Relief, I think, is the main word,” Rossi said to describe the feeling after snapping a three-year losing run. “We’ve had some race wins that we’ve thrown away, for sure, and we’ve had some weekends where we’ve just kind of not had the pace, for whatever reason.”
Relief, absolutely, for the former Formula 1 race driver and 2016 Indianapolis 500 winner, to have returned to the top step of the podium – a place that, by the end of Rossi’s second season in 2017, seemed like somewhere he’d be visiting many more times in the future.
Instead, the days passed without his number 27 Andretti Autosport Dallara-Honda returning to victory lane. Before the end of that streak, Rossi announced he would be leaving Andretti to drive for McLaren SP in 2023.
Which is why Rossi was glad to finally take a win before the end of his seven-year tenure with the only IndyCar team he’s ever known.
“It would have been a pretty sad story if we weren’t able to,” Rossi said, not letting his attention drift from the present.
“I’m not really thinking about ’23. You’re thinking about just what you can still accomplish in 2022. But yes, I’m happy that we don’t have to have that conversation of, ‘oh, well, it’s been cool, too bad we couldn’t win in three, four, whatever.’ I’m glad we don’t have to have that conversation.”
In the days that followed,Rossi’s triumph was soured somewhat by IndyCar acknowledging all had not been entirely right with his car. While IndyCar stressed his car had met the minimum race weight limit, its drink bottle had been used to do so, which is not permitted, and Andretti were fined $25,000 (£20,580).
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While this infraction might draw a stiffer sanction in other series, similar and arguably more serious breaches have been handled the same way IndyCar before. Sebastien Bourdais kept his win at Milwaukee in 2015 after his KV Racing entry was found to be underweight; Carlos Huertas’ sole IndyCar win for Coyne at Detroit in 2014 was upheld despite his car failing checks of its rear wing dimensions and fuel tank capacity; the late Justin Wilson’s final IndyCar triumph…
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